


supernova

by ThatAloneOne



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Coda, Episode: s02e05 Saints of Imperfection, F/F, I Feel Like They Needed More Comfort e.g. They Get It On, don't be fooled (entirely) by the summary this fic ain't innocent, there is a lot of internal monologue about what trust is though I'll admit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-07 23:17:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17969924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatAloneOne/pseuds/ThatAloneOne
Summary: Michael knew what trust was. She could see it, her face next to Tilly’s, sandwiched in a replicated frame.Trust.Stars, Michael would do a lot for that.And for Tilly? She'd do anything. But maybe that was the love, not the trust talking.





	supernova

**Author's Note:**

> _someonesgotta.jpeg_
> 
> if you're Lanie, this fic doesn't exist y/y?

Tilly was still winding her hands around her hair when Michael came in. She seemed to know she was doing it, at least, watching her fingers turn the ends of her hair over and over and over.

Trust. The Terran Emperor had tried to talk to Michael about trust today, like she knew anything about it.

Michael knew what trust was. She could see it, her face next to Tilly’s, sandwiched in a replicated frame. Tilly’s hair looked like a nebula around her, red and wild and tangled. Michael had been offered the first officer’s quarters but she’d left them to Saru. Now, she was glad. She was glad she hadn’t taken that from him, after everything else. That moss, those plants, that flower from his homeward.

This was better. Even when she walked into her- _their_ quarters and saw Tilly twisting her hair like she wanted to wring the memories out of it, when the air shuddered like a thousand too-fast breaths, it was better.

Trust.

Stars, Michael would do a lot for that.

This is what she had learned, those months she was learning and earning trust: Tilly wasn’t good at asking. Michael hadn’t been good at offering, but if she was good at anything she was good at learning. This is what she had learned: to trust that Tilly would back away if things were too much.

A hand on the shoulder, first.

A smile against her hair.

A hug, gathering Tilly tight until both of their breathing evened out. Until Michael could feel something between them as solid as any star. Trust or something else.

Michael sat on Tilly’s bed. The give was ever-so-slightly different than her own, and had she been anyone else or hadn’t sat here so often she wouldn’t have known. Whatever composed Tilly’s bed that she wasn’t allergic to was some other material, the same way that Tilly was composed of some other kind of gravity.

Michael could feel that. Connection. The irrevocable pull.

Tilly lay her head on Michael’s shoulder. Michael watched the stars blaze by in the reflection of their light across the floor. The edges of her and Tilly’s shadow had melded together, leaving no light between but that cast by the nightlight. Together, they looked like something that Michael could pick apart, some sort of art that meant a thousand different things to a hundred different people, limned in fractured silver light.

“Hey,” Michael said, soft. And she offered more. Her hand, On Tilly’s. Something to hold tight, if she needed it. She tipped her head against Tilly’s red one, watching their flickering shadow.

Tilly took Michael’s hand, twisting their fingers together into a tapestry. Michael could feel her pulse, feel her breathing, smell the hint of ozone and mycelia on her beyond the sterile, simple shampoo.

“Hey,” Tilly said, eventually. She was still watching her hair, flattened and pulled out of its normal curls by whatever had been in that pod. “Thank you. I mean, I said that. But I’m glad you’re back.” A shuddering breath, and her hand clenched against Michael’s hard enough it hurt. “I mean, that I’m back. That you came for me. It couldn’t have been-”

Michael offered more. Anything she could. Any step forward that Tilly wanted, that Tilly would take. She ducked out from under Tilly’s light weight and turned into face her. Up close, the tears in her eyes were almost too much to bear. With one hand still in Tilly’s lap, she cupped the side of Tilly’s face. Soft. So soft. A thumb across Tilly’s cheek, and she had given Tilly a chance to back away. A chance to say no. A chance to blink, to breathe, to blush or to understand.

 

* * *

 

“I’m only saying this cause I trust you, you know?” Tilly was adamant in that way she always was, ready to declare the world give her an answer for her eternal question. The mess hall bustled around them, somehow oblivious. “Cause I do! Trust you! Because I mean I know we started off a little rocky but I feel like I know you.”

“You do,” Michael told her, half-pushing away her smile. She wasn’t laughing at Tilly, not quite, but she wasn’t laughing about anything else either. “You know me better than anyone else on the ship, I’d think.”

Who she was now, at least. Saru had known who she was, and Sarek knew who he _thought_ she was. Tilly was the one who knew what it looked like for Michael to claw smiles back from that prison cell, what it looked like to see the world for a second time and know that second chances were the kind of gift that was always waiting around the next corner to drag you back down.

Tilly flushed. It wasn’t unusual to see that, but this time travelled all the way up her face, turning it near as bright a red as her hair. “I- thank you? I mean! I’m glad you trust me.” Tilly looked like she wanted to swear, but was trying to decide against it. “I mean. That I. Know you.”

Michael wanted to kiss her. It wasn’t a new impulse, but it was still one of those ones that was waiting for an action.

Tilly cleared her throat. “I trust you,” she said again. “So I’ll tell you this. If I don’t… back away? That means yes.” Her fingers twisted together on the table, weaving a tale that Michael didn’t understand yet. “I’m. I’m bad with touch. My mom- well. I mean, she wasn’t exactly super big on it and I never really had any friends besides this one girl when I was fourteen and- I don’t know. I’m bad at touch.”

Michael looked at her. Really looked at her, the way she’d used to try and stop doing to people. It was part Vulcan, part anthropological training, and she saw how Tilly was leaning, the flicker of her eyes towards Michael. And she remembered: the way Tilly always seemed to rear back after initiating a touch, like she didn’t know what to do with herself. “You’re saying that you want a more physically affectionate relationship, but you feel uncomfortable and unable to initiate.”

The wind leaked out of Tilly’s sails and she slumped back against her seat. “ _Yes_. And even just-” a wild flail, “accepting? I don’t know. Acknowledging.” Another face, and this time she decided on swearing. “ _Fuck._ It feels like trying to pull tertiary ionic transfer systems to say things. Even if I wish- I want-”

While Tilly made a noise that half-sounded like a scream, Michael reached for her.

“It’s hard to feel like I’m really wanted,” Tilly whispered. “Like it’s not an obligation. So it’s- easier. If I don’t have to ask.”

Michael wound their hands together, prying Tilly’s clammy fingers apart and surrounding them with her own. “And you’re sure you’ll back away if you’re uncomfortable. No matter what.”

There was something dark in Tilly’s eyes that Michael wasn’t sure of. Not anger or fear or the nerves that were still vibrating through the rest of her body. It looked like a kind of craving, one that Michael was all too familiar with. “I’m sure,” Tilly told her. “So just… can we try?”

“I’ll try a lot,” Michael said, maybe too honest, “for you.”

 

* * *

  

Michael kissed her. Tilly’s lips beneath her own read like an epic, a thousand unknown things hitting Michael like lightning and sending her mind spinning. Tilly kissed like she was drowning in oxygen, reaching for more because she _wanted_ with the force of a thousand suns. It was just lips and teeth and the gasp of half-unwanted breath but it was a fucking miracle.

Michael let go of Tilly’s hand and eased them back against Tilly’s bed, those machine woven imperfect sheets crinkling under her weight. One nip at Tilly’s lips, two, and she was gasping enough that Michael pulled back, Tilly’s taste heavy on her tongue.

One second. Two.

For the first time, Tilly reached out. Not with her words or her hands or anything that difficult. But her eyes fluttered closed and she made a soft noise, strangled, and arched against Michael. Michael pressed into her, hands shaking, sliding down Tilly’s arms and back up to her broad shoulders, Tilly’s uniform puckering along the printed dark metal.

Michael wanted this. Wanted her. It burned everywhere they touched, her leg between Tilly’s an her hands cupping Tilly’s shoulders. Michael wanted this and Tilly was still breathing, eyes still shut, head canted to the side with her throat bobbing as she swallowed.

Michael tasted her, kissing down Tilly’s neck, sucking until she left a trail of pink blotches. Nothing a dermal regenerator couldn’t fix but Michael breathed against them, against the evidence of her lips of Tilly’s skin and she burned like a supernova. Fire burned through Tilly’s hands against her, brushing over the soft cups of her uniform lining, delicate enough she could have been handling something priceless. Michael scared her teeth against the corner of her collarbone and was rewarded with a long whine.

It was enough not to speak. She didn’t want to. She didn’t need to o. Tilly had decided a long time ago that this was what she wanted and Michael couldn’t remember a moment when she wouldn’t have taken this, Tilly soft and panting beneath her and hands sliding over the curve of her ass and pulling her close.

Michael pushed herself up on one arm, leaning up and capturing Tilly’s lips with her own just because she could. This time, Tilly wasn’t nervous or slow or tired or anything but fervent. Michael got lost in that, in a push and a pull and a rocking, her uniform tight and scathing against her skin in a way it never way.

Then Tilly’s hands were moving, coasting up and over Michael’s shoulders. She fumbled for the zipper and found it, yanking Michael’s uniform away from her shoulder and Michael felt a few seams pop. Then Tilly was giving Michael’s lip one last draw, a last drink of the drowning, and yanking her up so she could attack Michael’s neck the same way Michael had hers.

Michael was laughing. Not at Tilly, but not at anything else either. Tilly’s lips were on her neck, something electric and painful and sizzling, and here she was, struggling to keep herself upright and not tipping down onto Tilly’s face. She nestled her face in Tilly’s hair, breathing, breathing, trembling. And then she was shifting, keeping herself in place above Tilly but freeing a hand to begin working on Tilly’s uniform. Zippers screeched and arms were tugged from sleeves and though Michael couldn’t see anything beyond that damn bewitching nebula of Tilly’s hair, her fingers brought her the same kind of image.

Tilly was beautiful. A statue but alive, a painting but able to be touched, soft and warm and yielding. Michael ended up rolling, collapsing to the bed next to Tilly. She ignored the sheets sliding away beneath her, piling on the floor a near lightyear away. She pressed her lips to Tilly’s forehead in a fleeting sort of benediction, sinking into the feeling. It had been-

But it had never been this.

Michael shifted herself down, giving her arm a better angle and letting her kiss Tilly again. Stars. Michael couldn’t stop thinking about stars. This is what being a star had to feel like. Combustion — not just a burning but a _making_ , forging something between them that shot through like fucking lava or lightning or really, anything that felt like an inferno. Michael was burning and breathless and hurtling towards something _more_.

Michael blinked and in between her eyes opening again she came, curling around Tilly and _feeling_ and feeling and feeling.

When she could breathe enough to move, Michael did. Tilly waited as Michael painstakingly worked downward, her hands fisted against what remained of her bed coverings. Michael tasted the edge of Tilly’s hip, tracing her thighs with a feather touch.

“Hey,” Michael whispered, her breath soft against the top of Tilly’s leg. “One more thing to try.”

 

* * *

 

Later, in the starlight still coming through the window, day and night lost in the faint whir of _Discovery_ ’s engines, Tilly was the one to reach for Michael’s hand. Tucked under the rescued blankets together, for once, Michael trusted she’d wake up happy.

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQUD0d7r9HU) at 75% speed on loop while I wrote. You might like it too!
> 
> Otherwise, you can find me on tumblr and dreamwidth as writerproblem193
> 
> currently unedited, we die like mne


End file.
